Product description

Through a series of critical readings this book builds a picture of the Roman reaction to, and adoption of, the Greek poetry of the last three pre-Christian centuries. Although the poetry of the greatest figure of Greek poetry after Alexander, Callimachus of Cyrene, and his contemporaries stands at the heart of the book, the individual studies embrace the full scope of what remains of Hellenistic poetry, both high literary productions and the more marginal poetry, such as that in honour of the great goddess Isis. The singularity of the poetry of Catullus and Virgil, of Horace and the elegists, emerges as more rich and complex than has hitherto been appreciated. Individual studies concern the poets' declared attitudes to their own work, the figure of Dionysus/Bacchus and the poetry of world conquest, the creation of similes, and the conversion of Greek bucolic into Latin pastoral.

Author information

Richard Hunter is Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Trinity College. He has published extensively in the fields of Greek and Latin literature; his most recent books include Theocritus: A Selection (1999), Theocritus: Encomium of Ptolemy Philadelphus (2003), Plato's Symposium (2004), and (with M. Fantuzzi), Tradition and Innovation in Hellenistic Poetry (2004).

Review quote

Through his magisterial command of ancient literature and modern scholarship, everywhere in evidence in his latest book, Hunter has enhanced our appreciation of the lengths to which poets in the Late Republic and Augustan era went to emerge from the shadow and bask in a light now fully their own.' BMCR 'As hunter says in his concluding sentence, 'In the stare of the evidence, fragmentary glimpses of partial truths are probably the best for which we can hope.' Hunter has given us much more than 'fragmentary glimpses' in a volume that should be on the shelf of every scholar of ancient poetry.' Latomus

Table of contents

Introduction; 1. In the grove; 2. In the grip of the god?; 3. Nothing like this before; 4. The shadows lengthen; Afterword.